Vacation Day 1

Why is it so hard to sit down and post on this blog.  I really have an admiration for those who blog everyday.  We recently took a trip of a lifetime and my only motivation for writing is knowing that if I don't they will soon be forgotten memories.

My parents are living in Jerusalem with the BYU Study Abroad program assisiting in humanitarian work and tours of the BYU Center.  Once they received the assignment I knew that I would be visiting them.  I studied their as a student 20 years ago and it quickly became part of my heart.  It is not some place that you can easily go back to visit, so I knew this would be my time.  The harder decision was who to take with us.  Would just John and I go, or would we take the three oldest girls with us, or would we really be adventerous and take the whole family.  In the end we decided to take the whole family and now I couldn't imagine it any other way!

I spent months before preparing.  Reading the New Testament, studying about sites long forgotten, and the current situation.  For all the prepration I could have spent dozen of more hours.  I remember feeling like I didn't want the trip to come because then it would be over and I wouldn't have it to look forward to anymore.  I also felt like it wouldn't really happen.  I was afraid that something would happen, we would get to the airport and they wouldn't have a record of our flight or something would happen in the Middle East which would prevent safe travel.

After I purchased the tickets they sent me an email saying our flight had been changed.  Luckily I examined it carefully and noticed that they didn't have the final leg of our flight.  Somehow they had failed to book the flight all the way to Tel Aviv.  That was my first scare.  The second scare came the day before we were to leave.  I received an email saying they had cancelled our fight.  A second email said that we had been rebooked through a different city.  Again after careful examination of all the flights I noticed that they had failed to recognize a day change in the travel and one flight left the day before the other flight arrived.  Because of this they weren't able to get us out for two more days.  It was disappointing but worked out fine in the end.

Salt Lake City Starting off on our adventure.

So, on Monday, December 16, we finally left for Tel Aviv.  The kids were great on the flight and all was going well.  In Newark we hit a snag when our flight was delayed almost 3 hours.  After going through a special security check to board the flight bound for Israel we had to change planes and go through another secure check point to board and leave at 1:30am.

Sleeping on the floor in Newark at 12 am.

The other snag was since our flight had been rebooked we did not have confirmed seats and all 7 of our
seats were scattered throughout the plane, situated in center seats.  We tried to get the airline workers to help us get at least some of our seats together, but they were not helpful.  As we entered the plane I prayed that someone would be kind and willing to switch their aisle seat for center seat.  As we were trying to figure out seating a very kind man recognized our situation and quickly offered to sit 'anywhere' we needed him to.  I could have cried with gratitude for him and for Heavenly Father for answering my prayers.  I knew someone would have to move, I just knew that at 1:30 am on a 10 hour flight people may have acted put out and annoyed.  He was so kind and helpful about the situation he was put into.  It made me realize how I can bless others with my attitude and helpfulness.

So, Benjamin, Josh, and I sat on one row.  Grace was behind us, Caroline was across the aisle, Hannah was behind us Caroline, and John was towards the front of the plane.  All of them were sitting in the middle.  Hannah was sitting between two Orthodox Jews which she was not happy about, but it was good for her to be put in a different situation then what she was comfortable with.  Caroline was sitting between two Orthodox women, who were nice and tried to talk to Caroline in Hebrew.  So we were off on our adventure, part of which was learning that there are wonderful people all over the world who are different then we are, and that is great!